Heading North - Day Four - Arrived Gladstone 23 49.969S 151 14.705E

A fourth night at sea and the whole of today and we
arrived here at Gladstone at 20.30 this evening. A passage of almost
exactly 4 days with a total distance of 496 miles. So one of our slower
passages, but we achieved our objective which was to get north of Fraser Island.
>From here on it should be more like trade wind sailing with the
southeast winds predominating. As a result there should be a lot less risk
of getting stuck somewhere for days by bad weather, which was always
the risk further south. Also the coast from here until Cape York (a 1000
miles north right at the top of Australia) provides a lot more
opportunity for anchorages with lots of Islands between the coast and
the Great Barrier Reef. So most people day sail the whole way, stopping at
a new location each night. That will be a nice change. Night sailing is
fascinating, but with it being the whale migration season, and having seen
pods off Coffs Harbour, we were a little concerned about hitting a sleeping
whale. We deliberately kept further offshore to reduce the risk (advice from one
of the whale watching boat skippers at Coffs).

The tropic of Capricorn is a mere 30 miles further
north and it is most definitely warmer this evening. Gladstone is
about 85 miles north of Bundaberg, where we arrived in Australia, so it's
the furthest north we've been so far. Once past Fraser Island there are a number
of places we could have stopped, the most notable being the coral cay of Lady
Musgrave, right at the southern end of the Great Barrier reef. It's
supposed to be a lovely spot with good snorkeling, but not a good place to be in
bad weather. They are currently forecasting the possibility of 30+kts
tomorrow and Monday. (It's a good example of the uncertainty of the
weather here as the forecasts today have been saying that a new low is
expected to be formed off the southern Queensland coast (Brisbane area), but
they are uncertain which direction it will eventually go in.) So Lady
Musgrave is not to be (and it's still too cold for us to
seriously consider swimming) and as we need to service the engine and
do a few things where access to a town is needed, Gladstone, with a new marina
in the middle of the town seemed like a good idea. It's major drawback
is the long channel to get in - motoring for about 15 miles and most
of it against the tide. After entering Coffs Harbour in the dark, we decided
that it's better to wait out at sea and come in in the morning. However, due to
the strong wind warning for tomorrow, and as the wind had dropped out
completely this evening, we decided it would be easier to get in
tonight. Gladstone is a huge port with ships and docks everywhere. Navigating
through the maze of lights to get to the marina, and finding our berth (again
allocated by phone - the marina staff went home hours ago) was quite an
achievement! Gladstone is another industrial city based on coal, like
Newcastle, but the port appears to be bigger with a more docks . We
passed 28 huge ships at anchor on the way in, all waiting to come in and load
up.

Its been quite hard physical work sailing the boat this
passage - with the changing winds there's been lots of sail changes during
the day and night. Ocean passages can be a lot easier as you might not have
to change sails for days. That's one of the attractions of the
tradewinds. However, we did see quite a lot of wildlife this time. Those
dolphins that had stayed with us for 30 minutes when updating this yesterday,
actually stayed for another 2 1/2 hours! That's a record for us. To see
them jump out of the water, and so close to the boat, was quite something.
Tomorrow will be a day of rest, apart from washing the boat down to get rid of
all the drying salt that's everywhere, even on top of the bimini and solar
panels (had quite a lot of spray breaking over the boat, particularly today
with strong winds this morning), getting the boat back from it's long
passage arrangements to normal living and pumping up and putting the dinghy back
together again. So probably not much of a rest at all!